A Year into the Third Republic - Where is Ethiopia’s Third Reich heading? RL Vol XIII No 451 MMXIX

A Year into the Third Republic

Political & Socio-Economic Transformation:

Where is Ethiopia’s Third Reich heading?

Public Lecture – Respublica Litereria - RL Vol XIII No 451 MMXIX

Costantinos Berhutesfa Costantinos, PhD

Former Chairperson of the AU Anti-Corruption Advisory Board

Professor of Public Policy & Sustainable Institutional Reforms

https://addisababa.academia.edu/CostyCostantinos

Abstract

Abiy’s speech at Davos indicated a major shift from his party’s ‘revolutionary democracy’ ideological leanings. While the Ethiopian economy is growing remarkably, a shift in macroeconomic policy can decisively contribute to high growth rates and new margins of manoeuvre for sectoral and structural policies. The glittery feature of such percentile growth is that the contribution of real cost reduction recorded is higher than in any of the well-performing emerging markets. A state model that accords primacy to macroeconomic stability notwithstanding; Ethiopia’s growth potential is yet to be mobilised. Structural transformation will in effect involve unchaining self-reinforcing policy trajectories and a coordinated change in the composition and level of public and private sector investments. While significant growth achievements have been recorded, it faces predictable armour of trials rife in poor nations with too few mechanism and wherewithal, while also wrestling with the perennial problem of sequencing policy reforms, all subject to doctrinal reins. Given the very slim boundaries for manoeuvre imposed by ideology and a complex interlace in its political fabric, getting the priorities right are the central issues to be addressed (Costantinos, 2019). Ethiopia’s five peace and security pillars have been under stress. These are a collective social psychology of uninterrupted statehood and martial potency; a consensus-based federalism of cultures; economic delivery that brought popular legitimacy; support from the international community and lastly, the threat posed by hostile forces (Maru, 2019).

April 2018 – April 2019 was an eventful yea for Ethiopia. PM Abiy has thrown a blowlamp into the heart of Horn of Africa and Ethiopian society and polity, nerve-wracking the terms of engagement of martial titans and thrown the centre of gravity of the Red Sea arena of war into unprecedented peace trajectory. The way he deconstructed the power monsters of the Horn region is purely ontological. This strategy of conjectural rise of political liberalisation in a rough neighbourhood of the Horn is going to be a seminal lesson in international relations and in political science. To reduce this action to some power mongering aim on behalf of the PM as constructed by the supermen of the Horn is too simplistic. There was a sense of aggravation among the citizens of the Horn that have not seen peace in decades and he seems to be tending to this vexation with gales that are fuelling the inferno of political transformation. There are costs to be paid but as is usual with such change, it enters politics and society in relatively abstract and plain form, yet pundits expect it to land itself to the immediate and vital local polity's socio-political experience. It suggests itself, and seems within reach, only to elude and appears readily practicable only to resist realisation.

Keywords: Ethiopia, ‘revolutionary democracy’, Abiy, credit & capital markets, liberalisation, media, civil society

See paper here or https://www.academia.edu/38727495/A_Year_into_the_Third_Republic_Political_and_Socio-Economic_Transformation_Where_is_Ethiopias_Third_Reich_heading_-_RL_Vol_XIII_No_451_MMXIX

Overall, the year in the third Reich can be stated to have made phenomenal achievement on the political, policy and social dynamics of the nation in spite of the economic and social challenges emanating from the recent history of the nation and dynamics of forty years of pseudo-socialist revolution.